Tony Blair thinks there is no reason to investigate whether Home Office ministers leaked any information to the media before the recent ‘Muslim soldier beheading’ raids. But today’s Guardian proves otherwise:

The Guardian has been told that an aide to John Reid, the home secretary, was responsible for one of those leaks, and has also learnt that there is strong suspicion among the highest-ranking police at Scotland Yard that one of their own officers also briefed the media.
…
The row over the leaks which accompanied those arrests erupted after deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, warned on Tuesday that such disclosures, both in advance of operations and while they were ongoing, could be illegal and highly dangerous.
…
Defence lawyers are expected to argue that it will be impossible for any of the men arrested in Birmingham to receive a fair trial as a consequence of the leaks at the time of their arrest.

3 Comments below |

I think they leak this sort of stuff as muslims are complaining about random muslims being disappeared. They usually try to give some indication of what crime they’re suspected of.

There’s also the angle that the military should know of such plots if they are the ones under threat when they are supposed to be enjoying their downtime. Maybe the military only could be told but in the information age it’s tricky to stop them talking to the press if they want to, and too often we see the press quoting “a military source”.

As for the fair trial business, it’s difficult to understand where that comes from. If the evidence is there the jury are going to get to see it – which is more than we or the media have managed. I trust them to be influenced by the evidence rather than what they read in the Sun a year or more previously.

Oh no, I can’t believe it, someone in New Scotland Yard leaked information to the press. That’s not like the service. Do we know what information was leaked? And who leaked it? And why?

There never is a reason to investigate Civil Servants because if they did, they might find corruption and collusion, the big “C” word. They might find out how their own collude against anti racism, so there really is no need to investigate them proportionally at all. Letâ€™s give them a chance, their White allegedly?

Instead let’s investigate Black officers like Dizaie and others disproportionately. It might cost millions, but what the hell, oops I meant, what the â€œhelios,â€ because these officerâ€™s stand up to the establishment, everyone should try and take their legs. Itâ€™s the in thing you know.

Then as they are doing this same users who take genuine officerâ€™s legs, these same people, surround themselves with token incompetent minority ethnic staff, (freshies), who at the pull of a string, will state there really is no racism. Can you tell I have had a bad day? Those at the top are to blame and must be held accountable.

I’m puzzled as to the use of the word ‘leak’ here, as apparently the news reports had nothing to do with anything the investigation was actually about, or anything anyone on the investigation team believed.

So it’s not information failing to be contained, ‘leaking’. It is information being created out of thin air, or from rumour and gossip. It’s more like one of those urban myths about people waking up with kidneys missing than it is a secret memo showing up on a journalist’s desk.